Smartsheet

Avantages

SmartSheet allows individuals and teams to work projects together, plotting milestones and critical paths, tracking tasks, creating alerts, and using gantt charts to quickly view how various team members are allocated and intersect. It does a good job of integrating with Office 365, allowing you to share links to files in OneDrive and to Skype within SmartSheet. The revamped interface makes it closer to working in Excel, which is the really the whole premise to Smartsheet: providing a familiar spreadsheet interface for working projects. To that end, there is a wealth of functionality for formatting cells to indicate project stages, task completion, etc. You can even apply conditional logic to have cells change color when a task reaches a certain stage. There are good controls for determining levels of access, so you prevent changes to your sheet except by authorized persons. Overall, it's a good tool for managing projects.

Inconvénients

The reporting functionality we paid extra for is a joke. Instead, we've resorted to pulling data into Microsoft's Power BI to create reports and visualize data. And like many other Cloud-based services, there's a core product and then tiers of functionality that cost significantly more. Smartsheet is a capable product, but I'm frankly unsure it's cost is justified by its maturity. I've had the feeling I've been paying for what's coming, not for what's already there. But since we've invested in it, I guess we'll stay the course.

Avantages

SmartSheet is a good project management tool that has an interface similar to Excel.
Pros:

1. Multiple Project Views - Project managers will appreciate the multiple viewing options such as Gannt and Kanban, standard spreadsheet and even a calendar view. Many options for different managers.

2. If Spreadsheets are your thing, SmartSheet is worth a try - If you and your team use spreadsheets a lot, you may appreciate that SmartSheet is based off the concept of spreadsheets, you can adopt and add different sheets for a variety of projects. So whether basic or advanced, a host of users can easily adapt to Smartsheet if they know how to use a spreadsheet, even to the point of adding formulas and formatting of cells. This is a huge selling point which makes SmartSheet a good option.

3. As Good as Project Management tools get - As a project management tool Smartsheet covers the basics. You get milestones, task management, comments, collaboration and project management and as mentioned before the view options.

4. You can add collaborators to a project for free - A good thing is that you can add multiple “users” to access Smartsheets without paying extra. If you do need to give them more privileges, there are options to set them up.

5. Support for Smartsheet is stellar - There is a thriving community of users and help guides and videos if you ever find yourself stuck and not sure what to do.

6. Smartsheet also integrates well with Microsoft Office 365.

Inconvénients

There is not a lot to gripe about SmartSheets other than on occasion, the app can lag or suffer an error and finding what error it is and how to fix it can be a little frustrating.

There is a limitation with exporting reports. If you want to display data in a visual way, you may need to manually extract the data and then add it into another application. If the reports feature could be improved and maybe export in a usable format it would be a solid winner.

Avantages

Smartsheet provides a very robust collaboration tool among teams and teams from other companies. The ability to show timelines, comments, attachments, and dates - all in one place - make it very easy to stay on track with projects. This tool also provides a very nice mobile and app platform to work off of while out on the go. We utilize the professional (paid) version to encompass all of the features that we need and are no longer offered in the free version, such as the ability to email directly from the sheet, send for updates, and utilize the reminder functions. Emailing directly from the sheet is a great feature since it allows you to send the comments, attachments, and info from the line all in one easy-to-read email. You can also cc yourself on the email so that you know that it was sent.

Inconvénients

One of the things about Smartsheet that could be updated is the ability to copy info from one sheet and create a new sheet. For example, my team utilizes this tool for registration for certain programs at our university. The ability to copy the entire sheet (with all of the info and attachments) onto a new sheet and update the dates, or minimal information, would be a great function to have. The other option would be to allow more functionality in the free version (which was previously there). The update to only allowing email sends from a single line in the professional (paid) version now is a bit challenging when we only budgeted for a certain amount of licenses for the academic year (and we all know how stingy higher ed budgets are right now)

Avantages

I love this software. I love the pick up and go aspect where I can access it on all my devices. I love the automatic saves- because I am terrible at remembering to save, and I love the ability to attach files and tag people for projects. I used the software at my previous company for creative project management and now I'm using it like agile for product development builds. Its great for tracking and overall roadmapping. I wouldn't use anything else when I can do everything I want right here!

Inconvénients

All the issues I've had have been solved in new releases but it would be wonderful if I could build graphic pages in the software- I'm hoping that comes soon. Like a mobile photoshop or powerpoint or image tool.

Avantages

SmartSheet provides a lot of great features: easy-to-use "card view", quick Gantt charts and easy entry of tasks. I really like the simplicity of the tool as it feels very much like Excel at first blush. The two levels of access -- one for power users and one for light editors -- helps keep the tool in a very affordable price range. I absolutely love the ability to create a web intake form within minutes that can be published live for use without a login to the system. The form is highly configurable and is a great way to grab structured feedback or details from individuals.

Inconvénients

SmartSheet is not a fantastic project management tool for software development. While the web-based intake form is decent for reporting bugs and it is a relatively simplistic tool, tracking items from beginning to end and creating validation loops should be easy but is not. Granted, we were using the tool for something it wasn't technically designed for, but much of the functionality is available within the platform for "light" development teams. Unfortunately, the implementation of specific task-driven items simply wasn't where it needed to be.